the national government to
guarantee to every citizen the right of self-protection, and this right,
for woman as for man, is vested in the ballot.

That this superior "white male" class may not be trusted even to
legislate for their own mothers, sisters, wives and daughters, the cruel
statutes in nearly all the States, both slave and free, give ample
proof. In scarcely a State has a married woman the legal right to the
control of her person, to the earnings of her hands or brain, to the
guardianship of her children, to sue or be sued, or to testify in the
courts, and by these laws women have suffered wrongs and outrages second
only to those of chattel slavery itself. If this be true, that this
so-called superior class can not legislate justice even to those nearest
and dearest in their own hearts and homes, is it not a crime to place a
separate race, one hated and despised, wholly at the will of that
governing class?

It must not be; and the one great work for the people at this hour, and
every hour, between this and next December, is to agitate this question
until the entire nation shall speak in tones not to be mistaken, which
shall compel the coming Congress to refuse admission to every
representative from the rebel States, who is sent there by the so-called
"loyal white male" people.

"_No reorganization without Negro Suffrage_" is the word to send back to
every rebel State. Until Congress shall define and settle this question,
it can not in the future, as it has not in the past, perform its
duty--guarantee a republican form of government in each of the States.
When Congress shall thus decide, there will be work to do in most of the
loyal States. Let us all labor to that end.

Men and women of Kansas, what say you, shall new loyal States or old
rebel States be admitted into the Union until they present constitutions
and laws truly republican, until they send representatives to Washington
elected by a majority of all the people--white and black, men and women?
You say No; your blood-enriched prairies, your battle-fought ravines,
your sacked and burned cities, say No; your martyred dead, your own
immortal John Brown, their freed souls all gloriously marching on, say
No!

My friends, there is one word more I must leave with you. There is yet
another danger. The reverence, the almost idolatry of the American
people for their martyred President, is being used and abused by the
political managers at Washington, and